University of Utah chemists Stanley Pons (left) and Martin Fleischmann.

Most people  including scientists and politicians  now recognize that a serious energy crisis looms in our future. Human populations use an enormous amount of energy, and as the population grows and standards of living increase, we will require even more. Unfortunately, the energy sources currently available to us all have major drawbacks in the long term. Oil is efficient, but contributes to climate change and will run out eventually. Coal is plentiful but polluting. Solar energy is appealing but only as dependable as a sunny day  and it's currently expensive to boot! A clean, reliable energy source that won't run out any time soon would solve our energy problems and revolutionize the world. You might think such an energy source is a pipe dream, but in fact, it has already been discovered  in seawater! Seawater contains an element called deuterium—hydrogen with an extra neutron. When two deuterium atoms are pushed close enough together, they will fuse into a single atom, releasing a lot of energy in the process. Unfortunately, figuring out exactly how to get deuterium atoms close enough together  in a way that doesn't take even more energy than their union generates  has been a challenge.

A hydrogen atom has only a single proton in its nucleus, whereas deuterium, a rarer isotope of hydrogen, has a proton and a neutron.

The process by which two atoms join together, or fuse, into a single heavier atom is called fusion. Fusion is the energy source of stars, like our sun  where it takes place at about 27,000,000° F. In 1989, chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made headlines with claims that they had produced fusion at room temperature  "cold" fusion compared to the high temperatures the process was thought to require. It was the kind of discovery that scientists dream of: a simple experiment with results that could reshape our understanding of physics and change lives the world over. However, this "discovery" was missing one key ingredient: good scientific behavior.